Miraculous: Tales of Bella Rossa and Cat Noir
by Androzani84
Summary: In this version of the canon, Marinette's parents died when she was young, necessitating that she move in with her grandmother. The bakery was bought by a family from Italy, among them a certain silver-tongued girl.
1. Chapter 1

Lila Rossi woke up on the first day of the new school year. She climbed off the elaborate bed she slept in to open the orange blinds to her bedroom. She smiled as she looked over at the Francois DuPont High School. The other pupils in her class had been eating out of her hand ever since she'd transferred there. Even the ones that didn't tended to leave her alone rather than getting involved. But they were far and few between compared to the gullible lemmings that made up 85% of the class.

With that done, Lila walked downstairs into the kitchen. As she'd half expected, her mother had already left for the embassy, leaving a note telling her to make her own breakfast. It was something she'd grown all too used to since the move from Naples all those years ago. Not that she minded of course. It gave her the opportunity to help develop her choice of words to the point where she had all but literally developed a silver tongue. Her choice of breakfast was a relatively simple, off-brand cereal, that had sliced bananas mixed in.

* * *

After breakfast, she changed into her typical choice of clothes, she continued out of the front door, passing the old display cases left from when this building was still a bakery, now used to contain whatever awards her family had received in the last 8 years. As she turned around from locking the door behind her, she saw an old man about to walk into the road without looking for cars. Deciding to try and reinforce her good reputation within her community (one that had extended to her parents as well, despite their absence from any real events), Lila dashed forwards and grabbed the old coot, pulling him to safety. "You should really get a guide dog in future, Sir.", Lila said in a sweet tone. "It might not be what you want, but it would help prevent situations like this."

"Thank you, young lady.", the old man replied. "I'll bear that in mind." With that, he was gone. Lila just tried to put the incident out of her mind and continued to class.

* * *

The class itself was marginally noteworthy. Lila had been asked to leave her seat by Chloé Bourgeois to accommodate a friend of hers that she expected to show up (who never did). Lila gladly complied, deciding to sit next to a new girl that had shown up for this year, by the name of Alya Cesaire. Halfway through class, Ivan Bruel got sent to the headmaster's office for starting a fight with Le Tien Kim. After being dismissed for the break between classes, Lila asked Alya what her main interests were.

"Well, if you must know, I'm a girl trying to start on a path to professional journalism.", was the response she received. "And I'm also a big fan of superheroes, like Majestia -". But before she could continue, a large rock creature crashed into the hallway. Alya promptly ignored Lila, deciding to report on this monster for some indecipherable reason. Lila simply headed back to her house, wanting to avoid all this craziness.

* * *

But unfortunately for her, the weirdness quickly followed her home. She found that a Chinese leather box, pentagonal in shape, had been placed on her desk in her bedroom, somehow bypassing the locked door. When she opened it, there were a pair of earrings. This changed Lila's mind for a brief moment (someone giving her free jewellery can't be that bad, provided he was gorgeous) before the small creature burst out of the earrings. Lila wasn't scared of this, she had just seen a large rock man burst his way through school and into the city. Instead she asked two questions. "Who are you and why did you come to me?"

"I'm a Kwami, my name is Tikki. I've been sent to help you become the superhero you were meant to be." Lila was shocked to hear this, but didn't show it. "These earrings are a Miraculous, which when put on, allow the user the power of creation. You must use it to fight against the stone creature. By calling for the Lucky Charm, you can obtain an object that can be used to defeat the Akuma. However, once you use it, you will have only 5 minutes before you change back to normal. Use that time to find the object where the monster's Akuma is contained, break it and then capture the butterfly that emerges with your yo-yo. The use the Lucky Charm to cast a "Miraculous Ladybug", that will restore all the damage the Akuma caused. The transformation phrase is "Spots On"."

The explanation over, Lila put on the earrings and said the phrase. "Spots On!" With a flash of light, the creature named Tikki vanished, with Lila's appearance changing. She was wearing a one piece suit resembling a ladybug, with a jacket-like skirt representing the shell covering the wings. She had a secondary "jacket" underneath, made of silk. She had a mask on her face, that obscured her eyes and had a pair of feelers sticking upwards. After admiring herself in the mirror for a minute, she climbed onto the roof through the trapdoor and flung her yo-yo into the air, swinging forwards.

* * *

It didn't take her long to defeat the Akuma when she found it. Despite the emstupido/em dressed in the Cat suit getting in the way with his stupidity, she managed to use her Lucky Charm-generated hosepipe to restrain his legs and grab his Akuma object, a crumpled up note. After capturing the butterfly and casting the Miraculous Ladybug, the rock man turned into Ivan. Apparently, the butterfly had come to him because of his anger at Kim, she was told later. After comforting him and sending him away, she stopped for a minute to talk to Alya, telling her some basic information she could use for further publicity in her new identity.

"If you want to know more about me, ask my friend, Lila Rossi. Use the name "Bella Rossa"." With that out of the way, Bella Rossa was off.


	2. Chapter 2

The next few weeks saw a very busy period in Lila's life. For once, she really was living as exciting a life as she claimed she did to others. Of course, she had to keep it a secret from the rest of the class. The Miraculous came with an enchantment that prevented her from physically saying anything. Fortunately, lying compulsively was in her nature, so she simply excused her absences by sending a staged video message stating that she was out of the country on business. To help back this up, she told her parents that the school had been closed, with the principal turned into a monster like the one from Bella Rossa's first day. Both sides ate it up like a 3 course gourmet meal.

But that wasn't important. What was important was the things she got up to in her new identity as Bella Rossa. As promised, Lila "redirected" Alya to Bella Rossa, with the two meeting up on the roof of Montparnesse Tower during a non-working day. She told the reporter her "life story", namely that she had received her power from a pair of earrings she had inherited. Which was technically true, giving the lie some credence. She also claimed to have no knowledge of how the Akuma butterflies came about. This would give her more people to save and help build up her image as a hero.

* * *

Sure enough, one soon popped up. The woman from the news was annoyed that she had missed out on the first interview with the new superhero. She turned into the super villain Prime Queen, intent on forcing the superheroes into a situation where they could either save the mayor's daughter Chloé, or defeat her in a fight. Luckily, Cat-Boy was there to help, so Lila had him rescue the girl while she defeated Prime Queen. And then she was "nice" enough to provide the woman with an interview after the fact to give herself further publicity. But that was just the start of her battles.

Several more Akumatised victims began to show up in the coming months. There was a weather girl who had lost a vote to a complete amateur (though Lila suspected there was more to it than first appeared). Then there was Myléne from school, who became a horror movie monster that thrives on fear. Fortunately, Bella Rossa found that the creature weakened from courage, which allowed her to go down easily. And that's not getting into Mr. Pidgeon, who had been fined for cultivating rodents. Even after taking him down, Lila had no sympathy for him. Chloé Bourgeois didn't seem to have a lot love for her, as she became Princess Abeile, who had a hive of brainwashed, bee-themed knights serving her. That defeat seemed to have effected her, as she left Paris soon afterwards to live with her mother in New York 3 days later. And those were the good ones. There was an Egyptian pharaoh wannabe, a disgraced master chef, a rejected tv contestant and an evil Santa Claus. There were probably more, but Lila didn't consider any of them worth remembering. She was dedicating herself to finding the culprit behind these attacks before she lost her popularity with the people of Paris.

An event that would come sooner rather than later. With the arrival of another girl from Italy.


	3. Chapter 3

Lila sensed something was off that day.

Normally, the sheep that made up the students of this school would be waiting outside the class to hear about her "exciting nightly adventures". She'd become rather good at that lately, given that she decided not to reveal herself to anyone. The Kwami had tried protesting this, only for Lila to remove her ability to speak altogether. She also kept her sealed in a lead lined pocket of her bag to stop her from escaping again. But back to business. Something else had lured the attention of the school, and she needed to find out what.

As it turned out, it was a new girl at school. From what Lila learned later in the day, by pretending to be an intern at City Hall Records, the girl was named Marinette Dupain. She was the daughter of the former owner of Lila's house, back when it was still a bakery. She had a grandfather within the city, who had been declared unfit for guardianship, owing to his insistence that everything be done the traditional way, even when it was more detrimental that beneficial. As such she had been placed with her grandmother Gina, a woman who preferred to travel the world rather than stay in one place for longer than two months. Now the grandmother-granddaughter pair had returned to Paris for this period. And to make matters worse, this girl actually had souvenirs proving that she had been to other countries, which might affect how they viewed Lila's tales of going to distant lands when she was unable to do likewise.

Lila would have to do something about this girl, for her own good.

* * *

As luck would have it, during a lunch break, Lila came across Gina Dupain on her own. She had allowed her granddaughter to go off with some of the kids from Lila's class, particularly Alya and Nino. This gave Lila the opportunity to make her ultimatum. She got the old woman's attention with a simple greeting. "Ciao."

Luckily, the old woman noticed her. "Ah, a fellow countrywoman. It's nice to know my granddaughter isn't the only one with Italian blood in the school the mayor's own daughter attended."

"Ah yes, your granddaughter.", Lila said, changing the subject. "That's what I want to talk to you about. I want you and your granddaughter to leave this city, or I'll have Bella Rossa tell people that you're nothing but frauds." She wasn't going to let the old woman get a word in. "Believe me, one word from her, and you and Marinette will never be welcome in Paris again.

With that, Lila walked away, satisfied with her warning. However, she didn't notice the old woman's face sporting a protective anger. She didn't notice the black butterfly that touched the old woman's tin of travel lozenges. She didn't hear the voice on the other end.

"I am Frau Schmetterling, and I can give you the power to make sure that girl and all her ilk receive nothing but coal. But in return, all I ask is that you recover the powers of Belle Aube and Cat Noir. Do we have a deal?"

"Let's punish those young rascals.", was Gina's reply.

"Good, good.", Frau Schmetterling replied. "From now on, you are my servant, Befana." With that, Gina was surrounded by a black mist, which dispersed to reveal a green skinned version of herself, with long red hair done into a pointed style. Her clothes had changed to a mix between a witch's robes and a biker outfit, with a flintlock around her waist. Finally, her bike had transformed into a flying version of itself.


End file.
